Yes but the artifact doesn't belong to them. It belongs to society and society said that construction must stop and bills the homeowner for this. That's not just. And it's counter productive as others will see this as a lesson to keep their mouth shut and destroy the finds.

True. :-)

I don't understand your vehemence. This is a public taking. If we say that starting from now all lands with species X on it are to be protected then we need to compensate people for their loss. Just because the artifact doesn't belong to the landowners doesn't mean they have the responsibility to stop work, lose money so society can have one more artifact in a museum.

Again, if the artifact belongs to ALL OF US, then all of us ought to pay for saving, preserving and displaying said artifact.

No. The government should reimburse companies, developers for their lost time and money as required by the Constitution.

This is also why the law is wrong. The law should compensate the construction company and the developer for the lost time. The Fifth Amendment states, among other things:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

I think it is worthwhile to investigate but we need to compensate people, not punish them, should they find something. If we, as a society, don't think it is worth the money then we shouldn't so burden the developers and owners of the land.

The technology is out there. It will only get better (by a magnitudes of a 1000) in the next decade or so. It can be used by governments for all sorts of purposes - so the solution is not to limit the technology (which can't be done) but by limiting the government (which can be done).

Natural rights are that which you have by virtue of being human - it's given by god if you're a theist or by nature if you're not. These rights are not given by government; government exists (at least the US gov't does) to protect your exercise of these rights.

Your thoughts are your own and you are able to express them without fear of the government. (speech, press)
You haven't delegated away your right to self-defense: 2nd A
Then you have limits on government action based on privacy and ownership (3rd A and 4th A)
etc...

I always hear the term civil rights? What is the difference between civil rights and individual rights? What rights do you have as part of collective that you don't have as an individual?

I haven't heard of any Mediterranean civilization being affected by the silting up of harbors. My grad school days go back Archie, Veronica and Mosaic, so things may very well have come up. Still - if they were major issues it would have been in the literature (ie the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Carthaginians would have written about it).

An interesting read, though a little dated, is Marc Bloch's Feudal Society.

Gibbons declaration for the end of the empire is no longer considered correct. In 476, when Romulus Augustulus was replaced by Odoacer the average Roman didn't see a difference in his life. The toll booths were still there, with the same toll booth collectors, trade wasn't disrupted, life went on. What killed the west, in my opinion, was the war started by Justinian to bring the West back into the fold. The resulting years of civil war and then rapacious tax collection following Justinian's victory led to the final collapse. When the Lombards invaded what is now Italy (c600AD) they found a decimated shell of what was there. Their invasion was the final straw.

Not rumor. I was a grad student in medieval history before getting into web development. (Hows that for a career track).

The medieval warming period is well known peaking from the 11th through the 13th C. The plagues are well documented from 200-700AD and from 1350-1700. The plots of land available for farming are also known from both tax records as well as botanical records. (How far up mountains crops are being grown.) Keep in mind that this describes a gradual cycle. There is no hard and fast date where it was warm until a particular date (say 199AD) and then cold from 200AD-700AD and then warm again.

A quick search shows a list of major plagues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics . Generally in cold and wet periods plagues happened every generation.

Absolutely, the patchwork put together by Diocletian (separating the Empire into the East and West) was evidence that the empire was falling apart. The argument for and against different reasons would take too long to go into but, among them are, the collapse of the Republic into a police-state/Empire; crazy laws to keep the status quo (your father was a brick layer means that you must be a bricklayer); people fleeing the taxes and the ever present civil wars; climate change (became wet and cool) meaning that less land was available for agriculture plus the rise of diseases. Plagues swept Europe from 200-700 in the cool period; the plagues disappeared from 700-1350 in the medieval warm period and then returned every generation from 1350-1700.

Other things contributed to the collapse such increased border invasions from Central Asia tribes (perhaps due to Chinese expansion forcing these tribes westward). Whatever it was - the collapse of the Roman Empire was not due to the rise of Christianity.

Most of these groups were not promoting candidates - and the Tea Party certainly did not promote Orin Hatch. A quick Bing search shows that Orin Hatch is not a Tea Party favorite.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/06/27/utah-tea-party-targets-orrin-hatch
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/palin-tells-tea-party-lay-off-orrin-hatch-165829376.html

Most Tea Party people are promoting a cause and not candidates; that is one of the reason they are not liked by the Republican Establishment.

That, as I understand, is not part of the provision. One can promote or oppose a cause, not a particular candidate.